Are you noticing muted colors or unusual artifacts when watching video on your Android phone or set-top box after upgrading to Marshmallow? You're not alone. Dozens of users across several devices are complaining of muted colors after upgrading to Android 6.0. On Google's own Nexus help forum and Android issue tracker, plus less centralized places like XDA and Reddit, users are complaining of similar problems after the update.

The photos above were posted to code.google.com by a user with a Gmail address (#12 in the thread). The difference in black levels between the first image (video from a Nexus Player running Android 5.1.1) and the second image (the same device running Android 6.0) is obvious.

The problem seems to stem from an artificially reduced RGB range after the update: an internal setting may have switched the Nexus Player from a full RGB display (with values from 0 to 255) to RGB Limited (16-235). That makes displaying "true black," at least in so much as it's possible with most televisions, impossible in the video player. This is a particularly vexing problem for anyone with an OLED television or screen, as that technology's ability to display true black by physically turning off a black pixel is one of its biggest strengths.

Some Nexus 5X and Nexus 6P owners are reporting similar issues, though those phones shipped with Android 6.0. A Google employee replied directly to the issue tracker thread, saying that they're aware of the issue on all three pieces of hardware:

Hey everyone, We understand the severity of this issue. It's a widespread problem impacting all Nexus Players on 6.0. We're working as fast as possible to resolve it.

We also noticed similar problems on Nexus 6P and 5X, as reported in #14; however, those had a different root-cause. Those have been fixed internally, and will be included in a future MR.

So, yes, it's a real problem, and yes, Google is aware of it. It doesn't seem to be universal (my Nexus 6 is running 6.0, and I can see true blacks on its AMOLED screen just fine), but for those experiencing it, it's no doubt very frustrating. Look for an over-the-air update to fix these problems, hopefully along with the next incremental build.

I know that "sRGB" setting on my 6P makes the colors very washed out. So I just uncheck it and it looks great. Wasn't sure what it was for.

Kenny Cornwell

sRGB modes for displays are typically for editing and stuff like that. It gives you wider gamut for more accurate colors, but a wider gamut also means there's less contrast and saturation (a good thing when photo and video editing). While not using sRGB is better for day to day use as it normally looks more pleasing to the eye.

I actually like sRGB better for daily use cases. Only thing that sucks is that it always gets disabled when going into dev settings..

ProductFRED

SRGB = Standard RGB color range. AMOLED panels, by default, show more colors than the standard range. The SRGB toggle forces the OS to show more accurate colors (which aren't as saturated). It's useful for color-sensitive work, like photo editing. SRGB isn't washed out; AMOLED is just extremely saturated.

diplodocusrex

"Washed-out" has become the industry term for "not extremely saturated". Appears to be what people wants, and that's why most got surprised when anandtech described the Nexus 5x screen as one of the best and most accurate, because it isn't AMOLED, which means it's "washed out". Go figure.

Kenny Cornwell

That's because most people naturally prefer more saturation over more accuracy. Saturated displays tend to be more pleasing to eye, while accurate colors are really only necessary for color sensitive work.

It's just like headphones, you typically don't see people just listening to music or something with studio headphones because they have a flat sound profile for more accurate sound designed for editing. While listening headphones typically have their own sound profile designed for a pleasing experience.

someone755

Depends on what you're doing though -- I've found that especially goes with headphones (though monitor color preference can differ slightly when comparing different workloads, like gaming, writing, or movies).
Some music just sounds better with a flat headphone. Rock and metal especially sound much better with bright, treble-full (if you'll take that as a term) headphones. To me at least, classical is best left on a flat frequency response.

Android by default has a kind of washed out color pallette, probably due to the java egl layer, so an oversaturated/ high gamma calibration makes the interface look better than it would on a normal LCD.
The trade off for that is you get less dynamic range and subtle changes in color are less distinguishable.

Actually the most accurate phone screen currently is the Note 5 AMOLED - it has a setting that makes it "washed out" = accurate. Hopefully though the sRGB will be a thing of the past soon, as movies start to use wider gamut and HDR.

If it really is just an internal swap from full range to limited range wouldn't this really only effect full range tvs? A limited range tv already displays 16 as true black and 235 as true white.

I'm surprised there's not full/limited toggle for it in the settings as the device needs to output in the same range as your tv in order for the picture to look right. I've never heard of a device that doesn't give you that option somewhere. Full RGB on a limited tv crushes the blacks and whites and limited on a full range tv makes the picture look really washed out.

Alex Olen

It's quite useful for energy saving in Amoled screens though.

syxbit

Yup. It's a video playing device that can't play video properly..... Is Google trying to destroy Android TV the way they did their Google TV ?!

Whatever man, thanks for the redhead in the photos! Until you took her down that is :P

Adam Casper

Since this bug is affecting the "true black" levels where AMOLED displays can turn off pixels, should we expect better battery life on Nexus 6P once resolved?

Right now it's not bad (4.5-5.5 sot), but it's less that what I was getting on the Note 4.

usaff22

It only affects hardware accelerated video, not the whole system (for the Nexus 6P at least).

You probably won't notice any changes to battery life unless you watch movies all the time, and even then it would probably be marginal.

Adam Casper

Oh okay....that's a bummer. Thank you for the clarification.

I'm still not sure why the battery life isn't amazing. With pure Android 6.0, the sensor hub, and a 3450 mAh battery, I expected more. Maybe 6.0.1 coming next week will help and not just be new emoji.

freonoman

Google doesn't optimize battery life in a fine way like OEMs do on their roms. Besides Google play services eating away standby time, You can get at least 9-10 hours of screen time on a 2000mah phone if they are optimized well and the battery is good quality.

Lord Argyris

I definitely noticed this on my Nexus 5X. YouTube videos in particular look quite washed out. My Nexus 7 (2013), also on MM, does not have the problem. A really easy way to see if you're impacted is to search for a "black screen" video on YT and compare the video to the black elements of the Android UI. On my Nexus 5X the video is clearly gray and not black. I'm glad Google knows about this, at any rate.

GazaIan

Apparently, for whatever reason, people have reported that this doesn't affect video playback in Kodi. Not sure how that works.

moew

It's only with apps that use hardware acceleration for playback. The problem was reported around mid-November, and it's expected that the Dec security patch will fix this.

Noise Shaper

They have just identified the issue and a fix is not expected for this montb

Yes, I hate Android, but despite eating my own words, and some crow, I'm going to buy the BlackBerry Priv in three or four months.... I guess what sold me is that BlackBerry is willing to put their name on it and everything. I just will do what I do every day on Winblows. Use common sense.

johnadams123

Ah, you mean the Blackberry that runs Android? Cool.

onstrike112

Yup. I guess what makes it a BlackBerry to me is that it has a physical keyboard and the BlackBerry Hub.

Dan Hoover

Am I the only one whose bluetooth audio doesn't work with Kodi? I have to use Archos player to use that. Also, what else do you guys install in your NPs? I'm really liking the device, I just want to do more.

Christopher Prats

If your into flashing, cyanigenmod is amazing for the device. They have 2 general ui's: one for mouse and one for the remote. They also added overscan options into settings.(Why hasnt Google done this?)

CoreRooted

On mine, it's Plex, Netflix, YouTube and Kodi with a smattering of games. I added a 64GB external drive (8GB is never enough) and that helped a lot.

YaKillaCJ

Rooted, xposed was a must for me. Adblock Plus, YouTube AdAway, Pandora Patcher.
From there I used the media Apps like Kodi (+Genesis), MxPlayer, BS Player, Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, CrunchyRoll (Sideload), BubbleUpnp, Perfect Viewer. After that I am still trying to figure out what's useful. Ive only had it a week. Oh and I disabled auto updates for the OS and Play store for obvious reasons.

Dan Hoover

Also, one of the coolest things that I found is that if you have ES file explorer on the NP and on your device, you can send files from the device to the NP by just checking the box on the file and hitting send. It's really sweet for transferring apks etc.

YaKillaCJ

Been using this on ES File Manager for years. It's a perfect way to send apps to sideload on your Nexus Player.

Nathan J

I upgraded my Nexus Player all the way to Marshmallow and then the monthly security patch, and then watched a rented movie (Vacation, it was alright) and didn't notice any problems. Not saying there weren't any, but some people make it sound like the picture is terrible, and it isn't. Looked fine to me.

Hard to tell with such sparse information about the bug, but TVs usually detect the limited RGB range (which movies use) and display everything properly, maybe that is happening in your case? It's worse on tablets/phones where full RGB is expected.

RexTalionis

I wish Google would fix their other bugs with Android TV on the Nexus Player first. My device can't go more than 30 seconds at a time before the audio would drop out for no reason, apparently because of some sort of audio incompatibility over HDMI.

ADofCLE

I noticed it as soon as I did a side by side comparison of my N6 and N6P. Brightness levels all the way up on both, watching the same video. The N6 blew my N6P away in that comparison.

Wondering

6.0.1 patch corrects this problem, now the 6 and the 6P look the same - deep inky blacks even with brightness cranked to 100.

ADofCLE

Also, I'm not sure if it's the phone or the app but, I was listening to GPM through my car (aux) and the music would just stop. Sometimes in the first 30 seconds of the song. I would have to skip the song and go back. Even then it wouldn't keep playing like normal.

I was in a good service area, and never had this issue on my N6 running marshmallow.

yann933

I have noticed this on my 5x as well, It would play the song for a few seconds, and then stop, when I unlock the device it seams to have skipped to the next song and it starts trying to load that song, but it never finishes loading, this has happened to me over 10 times, ever since I got my phone last week.

It may be unrelated but I also had trouble getting GPM to recognize whether I had internet or not, my data would be on but everything in GPM was grayed out and when I tried to play a song it said I had no internet. I had to turn off my data, and then close GPM and then reopen it and turn on data again, it's really annoying.

Marty

My Nexus 5 certainly has a very washed out appearance...even for an LCD.

VAVA Mk2

It always has

Đức Thành

Good thing I'm colorblind.

supremekizzle

You can't tell the difference between dark black and light black?

Đức Thành

Ofc I can, dark black is the blacker black right?

Dude

No wonder blacks have been looking like gray!! I don't have OLED but you can certainly tell when a letterboxed video is playing on my nexus Player.

Can confirm Fugu 6.0.1 (MMB29T) fixes his issue with Nexus Player.
The colors when watching movies are no longer washed out.

Joshua Seal

i had this same problem on my sm-g900w8 galaxy s5. I updated to marshmallow 6.0.1 and i noticed the next morning that all the colors were off from normal, they were a bit more grey and green, and the menu bars were grayscale looking and such.

Turns out, they added like 19 different color changing options/tweaks in the update and they are all in a different place in the settings. lol.

• First, go to: settings>display>screen mode> and change it to standard, or whatever looks best
• just below that option under the display menu you will see "auto adjust screen tone" which had some affect on color, brightness, and the tints.
• Next go to accessibility>vision>colour adjustments and go through the process of matching the colored squares up sequentially, placing the ones that are most similar in color together. this will help to calibrate the screen a bit, and i thought that would fix it, but there's more. (also make sure 'negative colors' isn't activated, although that one is a major change and you'd notice if that option were at fault)
• There is also a 'grayscale' mode that can be activated in one of the 'power saver' settings screens, but i didn't have that one activated and still had the problem.

• The setting that i finally found that fixed the gray looking screen and messed up, slightly off tint colors was the last one i found regarding the screen's display colors or anything like that, naturally.

To finally fix that awful dead/zombie grey color and the icky weird teal color that was supposed to be green:

goto 'Developer Options'>then scroll down a good bit to "simulate color space" and change it to 'disabled.' This finally gave me back a bright, vibrant, sharp, crisp screen display with colors that actually matched the colors i am used to seeing, not those weird dull grey pastel creepo depressing screen colors that were there before.

*Note that i went through all these steps, and my 'vision'>'color adjustments' effects from lining up the similar colored boxes is still active and i like how it looks. You might want to play with the above settings until your screen pops at you and makes you happy faced.